In Defence of Jobseekers

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the gloomy economic forecasts. Maybe it was listening to a particularly brutal Recruiting Animal show. Or maybe it was hearing from a 55 year-old who landed a job after an 18-month job search, only to see the company go bankrupt within two weeks of his start date. Whatever it was, by the end of the week I wasn’t in a chirpy mood, and that’s when I came across a semi-comedic blog post from a corporate recruiter about a jobseeker who had the nerve to use a typewriter to prepare his resume for an IT support position. Now I have tremendous respect for the author, and I know that he goes out of his way to give jobseekers stellar advice. But something about the post didn’t sit well with me.

Here’s why:

• One in five people in the US do not have access to the internet.
• One in five people who want to work right now, can’t find a job.
• Those groups overlap, and where they do, it’s ugly. Soul-sucking-hopelessness ugly.

I can type up a one page document on the computer in about two minutes. If I tried to do it on a typewriter, even badly, it would take at least 45 minutes. It’s hard, I know, because I used to produce all my university essays that way before I got one of the very-first-ever Mac’s (yes, I’m THAT old). This guy is doing it for Every. Single. Job. He. Applies. To. That takes tenacity. Even more so to walk into every office and hand deliver that resume, and risk the scorn of the person who receives it.

No, the applicant wasn’t qualified for the job he applied to, and he probably knows it. But the reality is that somebody without computer skills in today’s job market is screwed. In fact he probably applied to the job on the slim chance that he could get on-the-job-training to acquire the skills he knows he’s missing. Long term unemployment can make a person desperate and hopeful that way.

One of the pitfalls about being a recruiter or a hiring manager or the HR assistant who screens resumes is that it is too easy to become jaded about the people who are looking for work. Right wing rants to the contrary, most people I know who are out of work right now would rather be gainfully employed. They would rather not be typing up and hand delivering hundreds of resumes to people who will give those documents less than three seconds of eye time. And they would most definitely rather not be the laugh-for-the-day when their best efforts fall far short of the high bar that has been set for how to land a job in a tough economy. If we can offer jobseekers nothing else right now, we can at least offer them acknowledgement for their efforts and respect for their dignity.  I don’t think that’s asking much.

Okay, hopping off my soap box now.

Tags: finding a job, jobseekers, Karen Siwak

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.